What is Adobe doing?

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PALOS VERDES, Calif.--"We produce the world's content," Adobe's Shantanu Narayen said today when D9 conference host Walt Mossberg asked him, "What's up with Flash?"
"Flash is really a small part of the company," Narayen said, offering no comfort to the world of Flash developers. Referring to the dust-up with Apple over Flash on the iPad, he added, "it's clear that it's not a technology issue...We allow people to author once," and publish anywhere. "It's a business model issue," he continued. "It's all about control of the applications you can run on the platform."

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-20...ng-importance/

I expected that there would be a lull in flash work while Steve Jobs is telling people that it's cutting edge to make dry, on-line brochures for web-sites. But, I never expected that Adobe would immediately and obediently roll over on the issue.

I figured that the market would eventually bring Flash back since the same deficiencies in alternative platforms are still there. But, I don't see how it can if Adobe isn't willing to stand up for and invest in its own product.

Does anyone know where/who complaints can be sent to Adobe? Their contact us page is useless and the legion of Flash Evangelist folks they used to have seems to have disappeared over-night.

Hype was just released by two ex apple developers, it looks just like flash 2 or 3 before it had any real code implementations. I think adobe is going to concentrate on wallaby or edge which is html+js based animation tools. Pretty much we are going back in time with flash with only one difference and that is source code can be seen now.

As for the evangelist who disappeared overnight they switched over to js side. Evangelist did the right thing because half the new canvas experimenters are ex or still flash developers. The evangelist are riding the new wave with actionscript2 skills. I think flash will come back when companies realize how much more it costs to build a site/banner in js developer price.

It's hard for me to believe that the market will just accept how far behind html+js based animation is. Not to mention the additional costs / maddening development process of cross-browser (and now cross platform on mobile) issues and testing.

Maybe it just needs more time for businesses to figure it out... We're seeing clients hitting brick walls over this left and right. "Can we switch to flash at this point in development?" "Why does it take a week to style these scroll-bars for 3 browsers?"

It's just disheartening to see how poor of an effort Adobe is putting forward for Flash. Their response to Apple's attack was to publish advertisements about how much they love Apple? wtf.

This is what I'm reading.

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Despite drawing a line under the row, Narayen argued that Adobe's approach was still very much multi-platform and said that applications compiled in Adobe AIR can be easily converted for iOS.

Narayen went on to explain that Android-based tablets would begin to overhaul Apple's iPad in the tablet market. "What you saw with smartphones hitting an inflection point with Android, you'll see it again with tablets. There will be another 20 tablets that will come by the end of the year that will push the industry in different directions," he said.

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http://www.pcworld.com/article/22931...e_is_over.html

So in the cnet article it states that adobe had given up on flash, while in the pcworld article adobed is stating that flash won.

Yeah. What they are saying is exactly what I was expecting to happen. However, I'm not seeing it on the ground yet and Adobe seems to have pulled back their advocacy efforts. In years past, they had people running regular conferences in every major city.

Maybe it just needs more time to work out. But, we're at a point where it's too much of a gamble to assume it will. We're pushing to do more mobile development, particularly Android, to be safe.

The comments under the pcworld article are exactly the problem. A bunch of people who have never written a line of code in their lives running their mouths about things they know nothing about. Their source of information? Steve Jobs. Adobe needs to establish their own public source of information and it should be just as pointed as Apple has been about this.

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Originally Posted by FlashLackey

We're pushing to do more mobile development, particularly Android, to be safe.

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We're doing quite the opposite...focusing on Mobile, but more for iPad (not necessarily iPhone compatible) with Blackberry native for additional companion products. As our focus is on the financial community, we may not be in line with the rest of the world, but as Android continues to gain ground on iPhone penetration, the iPhone subscriptions are still improving as well.

iPad, IMHO, has lapped everyone else in the tablet world. You might as well just refer to a tablet as an iPad as every other offering is an also ran.

I do, however see HTML5 as the solution to having to build native apps across many different platforms...assuming that all of the tablet makers can apply the HTML5 methods in the same manner for the same experience across the board.

RIMM is basically a dinosaur at this point. The fact that their major selling point of the playbook is the fact that it has Flash compatibility speaks volumes. Even though everyone on Wall Street carries a Blackberry of some sort, we've already decided that for the next 12-18 months, we'll not be doing any work to support Playbook. Period.

While I couldn't agree with FL more, Sadly that creates a no win situation with apple fanboys. They will believe what they want to believe regardless of the evidence and feel threatened when someone tries to spell out the facts.

I get the same type of stuff all the time in the music forums. This usually has to do with software/sound libraries/soft synths not being compatible with mac's Apple could fix several issues but that would mean a loss of market control.

Getting into bed with Apple is a no-win situation in terms of when they decide to compete against you, they'll pull a Final Cut Pro or Motion - which competed so heavily and favorably against Adobe Premiere (FCP) and AfterEffects (Motion) that Premiere had a version or two that was skipped on OS X and AfterEffects is usually a secondary when it comes down to certain kinds of effects or quick projects.

I'm still waiting on Apple to go after Photoshop. I doubt they'd make a dent into that market though. But going after Flash makes sense. They don't like it, so why not push a project like Hype - and no, not the Flash version of Hype, which was first.

What Adobe is doing is stating that they use, support and are growing Flash. But at the same time, it's traction seems to be going more towards dev, thus AIR than web, where it's more maligned due to Steve Jobs and Apple fanatics. Smart move - people that like Flash, will continue to publish to the web using it. Developers that use it, will expand from desktop to Android, BlackBerry Playbook and Apple iOS.

That's my take...

From a business stand point, the best place to be is under a paying contract no matter the platform. The landscape will always change and we have to be prepared for the possibility of flashes death.

Despite some bad news I've heard on the grapevine, flash is an unmatched joy to develop in. Of course I've yet to tear into Unity which I think is where I'd rather be. I recently put together a simple web app in js and it went way over budget, past the deadline and had to sacrifice a lot of design and layout in terms of cross-browser consistency. Multiple browser support contributed to most of the delays/hurdles.

Our current project started out spec'd for js and had to switch to flash simply due to the need to support IE6.

It kinda sucks because if your work through this http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/ you'll really appreciate what js brings to the table but clients that support it (browsers) ruin it.

Adobe is a lucrative company, but they act like their last dollar is on the table. Heavily fractured teams who don't communicate, lots of valuable dev cycles wasted on producing crap like Flex (sorry Gerbick, it sucks). Core employees leaving to start great products like Corona. A step towards unifying their app's UI's went sideways fast.

They need to just take a deep breath, do in depth research (like Apple does) before committing to a new direction and eat the cost of some top tier project managers.

One void I hope they fill before Apple does is a killer-app html/js/css authoring tool. Yes we hate generated code but we hate hacking multiple browsers even more. I firmly believe a visual editor can be built that generates clean markup and valid cross-browser css. It's time.

I'm also confident in AS3's future, but feel that .swf's might be the least compiled format.

P. S.
My boss wrote AS3's Hype. He's not sure how to feel about the name getting ripped considering they are vastly different in purpose.

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Originally Posted by hanratty21

We're doing quite the opposite...focusing on Mobile, but more for iPad (not necessarily iPhone compatible) with Blackberry native for additional companion products. As our focus is on the financial community, we may not be in line with the rest of the world, but as Android continues to gain ground on iPhone penetration, the iPhone subscriptions are still improving as well.

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We do iPad also. But, the trend we're seeing is more that clients are choosing mobile-friendly HTML-based apps (instead of flash-based) so that they can be viewed on iPads rather than full-blown iPad apps. Very few clients we've pitched to want to shell out the additional cash and deal with extra Apple bs for a limited demographic.

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Originally Posted by hanratty21

iPad, IMHO, has lapped everyone else in the tablet world. You might as well just refer to a tablet as an iPad as every other offering is an also ran.

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I haven't tried the other tablets to know how good they are. But, I agree that Apple has a head start on everyone. However, they can't compete on price point and will eventually become the Escalade of tablets rather than the Toyota. Could take a few years though...

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Originally Posted by hanratty21

I do, however see HTML5 as the solution to having to build native apps across many different platforms...assuming that all of the tablet makers can apply the HTML5 methods in the same manner for the same experience across the board.

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I disagree with this. We have 15+ years of evidence that multiple deployments of HTML by third parties will never be consistent. Now, instead of a few top browsers, we have various levels of phones, tablets, tvs and who-knows-what other devices are going to be running web apps on their little led screens. Plus, the sophistication of what the standard is supposed to handle has increased. Even the designers of HTML5 are aware of this problem. That's why they aren't expecting full implementation until 2022. 10 years ago we didn't have iphones or ipads. Who knows what the situation will be like 10 years from now? They set the bar for themselves so low that we're supposed to accept 10 years of half-assed implementations and inconsistencies so that they can say "it's not our fault because it's not ready yet."

The irony is that the current structure of HTML/Browser web viewing is the dinosaur. Not plug-ins like flash. HTML should be rendered by a W3C, open-source plug-in. That way it renders consistent across platforms, can be easily updated, can be tiered down for light-weight devices, etc. Why the standards fanatics object to this is beyond me. It seems to simply be pride and not wanting to have to admit they were wrong about flash and the doomsday predictions they made about plug-ins 15-20 years ago.

All of this isn't even to get far into the fact that HTML is a mark-up language being tortured into a scripting language. Mark-up is very useful for many applications and web sites. However, it falls way short in meeting many demands. Ford doesn't want to sell their vehicles on a web-site that looks like Mozilla or Verizon. Styling, etc. are a huge PIA via HTML. It was never designed for that and HTML5 brings very little to nothing new to the table in that regard.

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Originally Posted by hanratty21

RIMM is basically a dinosaur at this point.

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Can't argue with that. RIMM is way behind for whatever reason. But, Google is no slouch with UIs, imo.

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Originally Posted by Frets

While I couldn't agree with FL more, Sadly that creates a no win situation with apple fanboys. They will believe what they want to believe regardless of the evidence and feel threatened when someone tries to spell out the facts.

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Sad but true. Fortunately, businesses will eventually "vote" with their pocket-books. And that favors flash, iPad alternatives, etc.

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Originally Posted by gerbick

Getting into bed with Apple is a no-win situation in terms of when they decide to compete against you, they'll pull a Final Cut Pro or Motion - which competed so heavily and favorably against Adobe Premiere (FCP) and AfterEffects (Motion) that Premiere had a version or two that was skipped on OS X and AfterEffects is usually a secondary when it comes down to certain kinds of effects or quick projects.

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It's true. Adobe's products really are logical territory for Apple to go after. I can't blame them as a business for doing it. And if they came up with the best web app solution and everyone understood and wanted it, we would be all over selling it. I just hate to see them making ground on a fraudulent basis. It basically ends up degrading the quality of the product we're able to deliver to our clients.

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Originally Posted by jAQUAN

From a business stand point, the best place to be is under a paying contract no matter the platform. The landscape will always change and we have to be prepared for the possibility of flashes death.

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It certainly has it's pros in times like this.

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Originally Posted by jAQUAN

Adobe is a lucrative company, but they act like their last dollar is on the table. Heavily fractured teams who don't communicate, lots of valuable dev cycles wasted on producing crap like Flex (sorry Gerbick, it sucks). Core employees leaving to start great products like Corona. A step towards unifying their app's UI's went sideways fast.

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I'm definitely getting that lumbering corporate fatigue feel from Adobe also. Isn't there a PC version of Steve Jobs somewhere that they can hire?

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Originally Posted by FlashLackey

The irony is that the current structure of HTML/Browser web viewing is the dinosaur. Not plug-ins like flash. HTML should be rendered by a W3C, open-source plug-in. That way it renders consistent across platforms, can be easily updated, can be tiered down for light-weight devices, etc. Why the standards fanatics object to this is beyond me. It seems to simply be pride and not wanting to have to admit they were wrong about flash and the doomsday predictions they made about plug-ins 15-20 years ago.

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This is my favorite thing you've ever said. I've felt this way for a long time.

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Originally Posted by FlashLackey

Sad but true. Fortunately, businesses will eventually "vote" with their pocket-books. And that favors flash, iPad alternatives, etc.

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100% true.

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Originally Posted by jAQUAN

This is my favorite thing you've ever said. I've felt this way for a long time.

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I suppose the reason they don't go for an HTML plug-in format is that it might lead to feature-for-feature competition with third parties.

Given their 10 year disorganized dev cycles, that's a competition they probably wouldn't win. So, instead, they continue arguing that other technologies (that have legitimate advantages) are somehow immoral.

Browsers would still have a legitimate competition in helper features, plug ins, debugging tools and javascript engines.

True. However, if a W3C plug-in didn't get their act together, some third party would be tempted to make their own HTML plug-in renderer faster and better.

Not that I think that's a good argument. From the consumer and advancement of technology perspective, I think it would be a win for W3C and HTML to have to compete to stay relevant.

More power too em. V8 is a kick-ass js engine, but doesn't muck with the language. As long as they didn't take liberties with specifications (LIKE THEY DO NOW!) I would hope that they compete to render faster. IE9 believe it or not has the fastest canvas redraw and its not from writing a better canvas, they mainly just throw more horsepower at it.
This would actually give the W3C some legitimacy instead of being the internet's U.N.

W3C has no muscle. They can't will an ideology or standard on anyone which is why there was fractured support of varying degrees thru browsers. While I agree IE9 kicks butt and heavily. Browsers do not dictate purchases.

There are several areas where apple has failed to gain a solid foothold in for all the attempts to shut down the market and there are still markets where the little guy rises up from nowhere to dominate.

In regards to renderer plugins, that's kind of a dead field. The only one that has survived the long haul has been.....flash. I doubt a new plugin would reach enough of the masses to make a dent. As soon as my favorite idiot (Dvorak) gets wind of a new plug in. He'll ramble endlessly about non existant security breaches using such a plug in. And I wouldn't be surpised if apple found some way to disable it until they can brand the idea s there own.

Apple was instrumental in the best interpreter out there, webkit. Unity is getting adopted on an ever increasing scale. I too have said there'll never be another flash, but a browser who simply put a face on a webkit engine and wrapped it all in an installer would slip through nicely.
NOBODY takes Dvorak seriously.

bump

Slightly off topic. but entertaining...
http://cnnmoneytech.tumblr.com/post/...t-their-tablet

That review made it sound like a decent product. The criticisms are either the same on the ipad (also has a tiny power button and most popular models need to use wi-fi) or kind of dumb (most people use non-proprietary apps such as gmail for email and calendars).

Thanks for that. I'm sure blackberry is feeling twice as bad now.

Just wait until Molehill is out and one can develop 3D in Flash easier. 3D is the future and it seems that Adobe is focusing on that and promoting it.

If 3D in flash becomes easy, its not because of Adobe. Molehill provides a desirable set of controls but is closer to pixel bender than as3. If you're having fun generating 3d for flash, you're likely using Unity.